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31 March 2013

Today being Easter, I thought it would be appropriate to offer up an Easter Basket full of goodies of which you've likely never heard, and which I thoroughly enjoy. Lest you find yourself amongst the teeming hordes of non-Christians who could give a shit about Easter, buck up- I've got music, supplements, and movies to get you through this trying celebration of Christian piscetarian zombies.

Side note- a practice we need to adopt in the West is the Czech tradition of spanking women on Easter Monday. Spankings are always good fun, and in this case they're for a good cause- the spanking grants the spankee good health and beauty over the coming year. Therefore, find a booty and spank it on Monday.One More Random Music Recommendation

Iggy AzaleaSpeaking of booties... I realize I'm a little late to the party on this one, but my only exposure to Iggy had previously been her song"Pu$$y", which while amusing didn't have much staying power in my rotation. Her latest shit, however, is damn good- badass beats, far smoother rhymes than most of what her "rival rapper" Kreayshawn, and fairly intelligent lyrics for a high school dropout. Perhaps it's the booty, and perhaps it's the fact that she's from Australia and I'm fairly certain that I was an Aussie in a former life, but this shit is worth slipping into the rotation on the rare occasion I need a break from breakdowns. The videos I posted below are some of her more mainstream stuff, but the new shit she's got out have beats that blow M.I.A.'s stuff out of the water- it's really more along the lines of seriously cool electro with rap overlaid on the beat.

Perhaps in an effort to take a break from their primary directive of doing everything they do in their lives in the furtherance of evil, Russian scientists have delivered a beautiful baby onto the pharma market in Russia, and the US supplement market. This baby is actually an entire family of drugs called racetams, which the Russians created to make people more intelligent. They were probably looking for a way to get their scientists intelligent enough to make prostitution robots that crush a man's spirit and steal his wallet all at the same time, which playing the old Soviet national anthem. Nevertheless, they've made huge leaps in the last few years with racetams- the family of drugs serving as pharmacological aids for memory, cognition, and a variety of other mental health features. These supplements, which were widely available for a short period of time in preworkouts and general nootropics were pulled when the US government issued a statement that stated that piracetam, the most popular of the racetams in the US, could not be sold in the United States because it did not fit the definition of a dietary supplement. As such, all of the racetams were pulled from product formulations that contained them. That is, until now. LGI Labs recently released N-Pept 10 and CTD Labs has Noopept both products contain what has been described as a "brain steroid", a substance called Noopept. Noopept almost sounds too good to be true. Like the other racetams, it's used most heavily in Russia, and it is considered to be essentially a wonder drug. Though the mechanisms by which racetams work are unknown, the entire family of drugs appears to do the following:

reverses the effects of both aging and alcoholism on the brain

lowers signs of depression

improves memory

improves blood flow to parts of the brain associated with cognition and memory

aids in cognition for schizophrenics

Noopept is BETTER than the best of the previous racetams - by a factor of 1000. This stuff is basically the drug from the movie Limitless, only without going full retard after a couple of months. According to Wikipedia:

Animal studies have shown noopept to be neuroprotective and enhance memory in various tests.

Noopept displays both high oral bioavailability and good blood–brain barrier penetration in rats

Human studies have shown promising results, with potential application in the treatment of Alzheimer's disease.

It is also an "immunocorrector" in mice.

Best of all: Chronic treatment with Noopept was not followed by the development of tolerance, but even potentiated the neurotrophic effect. Thus, the more and longer you take it, the better it works! In anecdotal research, each does seems to last 2 – 4 hours. Russian Noopept literature recommends taking a one month break from the product every 1.5 months to regain the euphoric feeling you get initially.

Dosing suggestions for Noopept are 10 – 20 mg taken 1 -3 times a day depending on your need. The specific optimal dosing for Noopept is .5mg per kg of bodyweight. You do not build up a tolerance for the Noopept so there is no need to increase the dosage past these levels.

I bought a bottle of this the other day and took it when I awoke on Saturday, with the intent that it might make me better at Call of Duty (yes, I lead an exciting life). Thus, I slammed a Bang!, popped 20 mg of D-Pept... and proceeded to read four issues of Muscular Development back to back and take notes on pertinent scientific studies outlined therein. That took me about an hour and a half, after which time I switched to Call of Duty and tore it up. This stuff is legit.

I'm not one to really hawk a supplement, but I'm sold by the science on this stuff. If you fail to get some, you're pretty much just admitting to the world you don't give a fuck how stupid you might appear to the people around you when you open your mouth.

Bang! .357

Energy drinks generally taste like gasoline mixed with brake powder and smell like a poison you'd use to kill a dragon, with the faint overlay of a berry scent, ostensibly to distract the dragon from your aim. As such, I very rarely consume them, as I like my taste buds and want to vomit when I smell a Red Bull in an enclosed space- they're like the Thais took all of the malice and evil behind turning an 8 year old boy into a castrated ladyboy prostitute was bottled and served in a can fit for an infant. Bang! .357, however, is nothing like that. The perfect compliment to my Noopept, Bang tastes like Mountain Dew, contains 357mg of caffeine, a bunch of BCAAs, creatine, glutamine, and CoQ10- basically making it akin to a liquified version of sex. Pass on it if you must, but if you deign to take a sip as a break from your berry flavored poison, you will not be disappointed.

Titties, exploding heads, and nonstop hardstyle martial arts action. Instant 1000 testosterone points when you watch this movie. You might be wary due to the fact that it didn't make it to theaters, but this thing was filmed in 3D and intended for a theatrical release- they just couldn't cut it down enough to get an R-rating. Yeah, it's THAT violent. We're talking a movie consisting of equal parts of the original Universal Soldier, Fight Club, and Raid: Redemption that features a cast consisting of Van Damme, Dolph, Scott Adkins, former UFC champ Andrei Arlovski, and former boxing champ Roy Jones Jr.- you're night going to find a better cast in any action movie, with the obvious exception of Expendables 2 (as it featured all of the first three).

Click here for the most intellectual review of one of the most violent films ever produced. I couldn't have written a better review, so I won't bother trying.

Dredd 3DAnother film shot in 3D, and if you missed it in the theaters, you seriously missed out- this movie is the reason that technology was invented. True to the comic, violent as hell, well acted, and pretty much cool in every possible sense. If it's possible for a movie that consists of little more than violence to be artistic, this is art.

Even Wired loved this movie- "Dredd 3D might be the only movie ever to make audiences say, “Did you see that guy get his face blown off? It was beautiful!” Ultraviolence isn’t for everyone, but for those who like their carnage over the top, this movie is aces." Watch it. Now.

TedQuite frankly, I was leery of this one. Family Guy seems to have jumped the shark a decade ago, and I couldn't imagine a worse plot for a movie than Marky Mark with an animated talking bear. I, however, was gravely mistaken- this movie could hardly have been funnier, even had it included Will Ferrell making random cameos. The story follows Marky Mark as he copes with the fact that his best childhood friend, a stuffed bear, came to life after the former New Kid wished upon a star that he do so. Ted, the bear, is a foul-mouthed, coke-snorting playboy who drags Wahlberg into a never ending series of hilariously offensive scenes, all the while being pursued by the astonishingly creepy dude from Boiler Room (another awesome movie you might as well throw in your Netflix queue). Did I mention this movie also features Mila Kunis, Putty from Seinfeld, and the dude from that horrible 1980s Flash Gordon movie? Well, it does, because they attempted to pack as much awesome as possible into a movie no one has apparently ever seen.

Still on the fence? How about a bit of the dialogue?Frank: You had sexual intercourse on top of the produce that we sell to people?Ted: I fucked her with a parsnip. Then I sold that same parsnip to a family of four.Just watch the fucking thing, preferably while wearing diapers in the likely event you piss yourself laughing.

Blood CarIf any of you have ever heard of this movie, I'll be shocked. I stumbled across this gem in the now defunct indie movie rental store chain TLA, which was a staple in the Philadelphia area for years before it fell like wheat before Redbox and Netflix's scythes. I happened across it on the new releases wall and snatched it up after seeing the cover, as I am easily amused and used to buy cds and movies based on their covers.In any event, Blood Car is the story of a nerdy vegan in the near future who accidentally discovers that the engine he's designed to work on wheatgrass actually will run on blood. Thus, he installs it in his car (gas prices have made it uneconomical to drive) and starts stuffing every motherfucker he can find in it to bang a chick who runs a butcher's stand. Not only is it as awesome as it sounds, the meat chick actually pisses on him in one of the many sex scenes. Need I say more? I think not.

Black Devil DollThis is the perfect drunken Friday night movie- unabashedly racist, blax- and sexploitation epic that features a horrible black doll whose body gets inhabited by the spirit of an executed Black Power death row inmate. After taking control of the doll, Chuckie Mumia pretends to fall in love with the huge-titted doll's owner, which simply turns out to be a ploy to bang her friends. The movie's little more than tits and ridiculous exclamations by a hard-dicked stereotype of a gangbanger in a voodoo-infused doll, and that's fine by me. Awesome by any standard.

Cue any song Luke (Luke Skywalker of 2 Live Crew, for the babes amongst you)ever recorded.

Bonus Music: The Poozles Recommends

NekrogoblikonMy girlfriend is considerably cooler than yours, and probably most of your guy friends as well. As such, I feel compelled to pass along her most recent favorite band, adding this to a list of bands that includes Yesterday I Had Roadkill, Nine Inch Nails, Whitechapel, Butcher, and Rammstein. I forgive her for the Rammstein, as should you. I was previously unaware of her love for folk metal, which I despise, but after mocking the shit out of a band called Finntroll, I found she didn't share my distate for metal recorded at a Renn Faire. When I happened across Nekrogobilicon, I had to tell her, because this shit is actually tolerable. Thus, check them out- they're sort of a wacky symphonic death metal. It's a combination of the fun beats of Cradle of Filth with the vocals and sound of Black Dahlia Murder. Even if you hate all of the above, their videos are still entertaining.

27 March 2013

Of all of the horrible dreck foisted upon the American public by television production companies, the worst of them is without question the paean to failure called The Biggest Loser. No one, no matter how disconnected from society they are, can possibly be unaware of this circus sideshow of obesity, given its ubiquitousness around the world. I found the fact that it's a worldwide phenomenon to be rather surprising, given that it's accepted as a matter of course that Americans are the sloppiest bunch of hamburger-guzzling, sloth-like gluttons on the planet, but our fatness has apparently spilled over into other countries, like a wheezing fat man's gut over and under the armrest separating your chair from his on the airplane. No fewer than 27 other countries and regions have aired this pathetic spectacle at some point, and America's actually had two concurrent shows at once- one in English and one in Spanish.

Univision: Making failure their business since 1955.

My problems with the show are hardly the average litany of criticisms, as I am hardly the average man. Most people find issue with the fact that the "poor" fatties on the show suffer while dehydrating themselves and subsisting on a starvation diet to win a game show. Welcome to high school wrestling, big wide world- they're not doing shit high school and collegiate wrestlers do as a matter of course. Shit, powerlifters cut weight all the time, and there's nothing but a medal at the end of the meet, rather than the Losers' hundreds of thousands of dollars.

They bemoan the fact that two contestants were hospitalized after a 1 mile foot race. A one mile foot race? Those fat fucks should have been shot on the side of the road, as the laggards (rightly) were in the Kurt Russell epic Soldier. If you cannot make it a fucking mile on foot and you've got two working legs, you should shuffle off your mortal coil- there is absolutely no excuse on Earth to be in that kind of shape, and if you're in it, fucking die already. You're a disgrace even to a species that worships people like the Kardashians and who think that living under a fascist dictatorship is "safety".

How about unrealistic expectations for the appearance of personal trainers?

They claim that the show sets unrealistic expectations for weight loss. We're talking about a show wherein obese people go on hiatus from their jobs and train with trainers and have meals prepared by chefs and nutritionists while on a weight training vacation. Did I mention they get paid on that vacation? Well, they do. Thus, they effectively have sponsorship while taking that weight training vacation. How could that be anything but unrealistic? Who on Earth, other than Marius Pudzianowski and Stan Efferding, can do that? What could possibly be realistic about that. Moreover, if you're a fat person using that show for inspiration, you've already failed- there's no pot of gold sitting at the end of your fatloss rainbow. There's just a lot of loose skin and a gremlin sitting on your shoulder screaming at you to eat Oreos.

Fatties gonna fat.

They decry the fact that most of the contestants regain the weight they lost. Welcome back to reality, people- that's what fucking happens. Apparently, the concept of a bodyfat set point is as elusive to most people as it is that a distinct and driving predilection to make shitty food choices and be a lazy piece of shit is how those assholes got fat in the first place. If they didn't care enough to do something about waistlines growing faster than the yeast infections between their sweaty thighs, they're certainly not going to do something about their weight after they get off the show, either. We're talking about people who need a $300k carrot and a stick wielded by screaming trainers who chase them hither and yon 12 hours a day and direct their every move- without external motivation, those fatties are completely fucking useless.

I think I'll start a blog bitching about the fact that Top Gear sets unrealistic expectations for my car buying choices. I would punch my mom in the mouth for a Lotus Elise.

Clearly, the world is missing the point entirely. If anything, the show the Biggest Loser exists because it makes less fat people feel better about themselves, and most of America is fat as shit. It's a visual Xanax for fatties thinking of (rightly) blowing their brains out because they've failed to keep the machine that is their body in top working order. You don't see gearheads whining that the automotive makeovers common on stations that typically feature hunting and fishing are "unrealistic" because the people on those shows have unlimited time and resources to repair and refit hunks of junk. That's because they know it's fantasy come to life, just like taking a 500 lb pile of dogshit and attempting to transform them into a productive member of society. There's a difference, however- the car played no part in it's own destruction, whereas the fatties' self-destruction is pointed, willful, and persistent.

No caption is funny enough for this photo.

Quite frankly, I have no idea how I have come across these things, but one blog has stood out as a bulwark of nonsense amidst all of the moaning about the fatties on the Biggest Loser- the ridiculously titled "Dances With Fat". This blog is the produce of a morbidly obese broad who champions the cause of "size acceptance" and rails against "fat discrimination", two concepts that are as stupid as they are pointless. Fat acceptance, for instance, violates a deeply ingrained cultural response to the obese that all of the whining in the world isn't going to resolve- the Western World's distaste for obesity. There are three categories for social stigma, according to anthropologists and psychologists- tribal stigma, abominations of the body, and blemishes of physical character. Over the last half a century researchers have determined that obese people fall into the latter two categories, as they are considered "undesirable and physically unattractive", and because their obesity is indicative of sloth and other moral failings in those around them (Carr). There is little evidence, however, to suggest that these stigmas manifest in actual discriminatory action- people are too scared of being perceived as discriminatory to act on their distaste for land whales (Carr). Instead, Carr argues, it is the Jabbas' own self-loathing projected onto other people that leads them to believe that they are the victims of discrimination. They literally hate themselves so much that they (rightly) think everyone else should as well.

"Size acceptance" is an equally pointless enterprise, as whining about how equal you are when all empirical evidence shows otherwise, and because heath care costs are rising due to the fact that the self-destructive lifestyles of homo sapiens hippopomus. It's one thing to have to dodge their ridiculous mechanical conveyances in Walmart because they've given up on walking and suffer behind them as they slowly trudge down an isle that they block completely with their bulk- it's yet another to have to subsidize those things because they're covered by Social Security and Medicare. No one will accept a person's willful attempts to inconvenience those around them because they lack the self control in the baked goods isle necessary to keep themselves to a svelte 299 lbs.

If only there was an oven big enough to accommodate this whiny motherfucker, I would stuff him in it.

That said, the author of Dances With Fat recently railed against the current, horrifyingly disgusting season of The Biggest Loser. For those of you who (blissfully) do not have that awful shit playing on the televisions in your gym nightly, this season has some of the whiniest fat kids you've ever seen making failed attempts to resemble their peers. Not a moment goes by without complaint or tears, and 30 seconds into each episode you want to drag those fat fuckers to death behind your car blasting "Good Vibrations" from the radio and chugging a protein shake. Never before have I been stronger in my resolve that we should just round up obese children and send them to the camps (in rail cars fit for cattle, as passenger cars would likely not withstand the strain created by their bulk), because if there's anything worse than children, it's whiny fat children in constant search of a Ring Ding while ostensibly well-intentioned people are trying to help them achieve their goals. That's right, each of these fat fuckers has delivered a tearful missive describing the horrors of being left out of kickball because they can't run, or the shame of getting stuck on the slide. The kids have explicitly stated that they want to lose weight, yet they bitch the entire goddamned time about the unfairness of having to diet and exercise. I don't know about you guys, but when I was a kid, I didn't need to exercise, because I was constantly playing. I ran everywhere, jumped off shit, rode my bike, and did the normal kid shit that keeps you from becoming a fat piece of shit. If anything, the show's a waste of time because those lazy little fuckers are incapable of enjoying physical activity. Rather than chain them to a treadmill, it'd be easier to drive them to the long-term lot at the airport in a stolen car, shoot them in the back of the head, and leave the car there to be discovered months later. No one will miss hearing those fucking kids cry, and we've saved ourselves the time and money of trying to resuscitate their fat asses when they keel over from a heart attack at age 30.

Dick Talens, who apparently is someone people on Reddit care about, insists that it's not a lack of willpower that's keeping that winter coat of fat on the good people at your local buffet, it's that they've failed to create a positive feedback loop for themselves that spurs them on to "fitness", something he apparently champions. Frankly, I could give a fuck about "fitness"- it's a throwaway blanket term to describe an ephemeral and subjective state of being. In other words, making "fitness" your goal is fucking retarded. In any event, he argues that the Biggest Loser is a terrible role model for the poor fat people of the world because it suggests that they should work really hard to achieve their goal, with the single-minded focus of a young Jeffrey Dahmer torturing his neighbor's cat. Heaven's no! Not hard work! Anything but hard work! What Talens fails to take into account when making his positive feedback loop is that the rewards must outweigh the costs for the fat slobs he champions, and that's often not going to happen. Giving up Oreos to some people is tantamount to the French Foreign Legion throwing down their weapons the second they entered the city limits of Camerone. We're talking about people whose entire existence is based upon the instant gratification they get from shitty foods and sloth- they're not going to be satisfied with the incremental progression they might get if they can avoid too many dietary indiscretions while doing something they hate (i.e. exercising).

When Griz wants to go for a walk, he gets to go for a goddamned walk.

This, my friends, is because fatness is not caused by genetics, or environment, or bad parenting (unless the kid is really young). It's from failure. A fat adult is a person whose life history is written on their body- they've failed. They've failed themselves, they've failed their sexual partners, they've failed their children... fuck, they even fail their pets, because those fat motherfuckers aren't taking their pooches on a needed 2 mile walk. These are people who think "KFC Bowl" is a legitimate answer to the question "what's for dinner?" They're the people who think a 40 inch waisted pair of jeans isn't a horrifying prospect and who haven't seen their genitalia without the aid of a mirror in years. These, my friends, are unmitigated failures, and no amount of positive feedback loops are going to reverse the damage their failure has wrought- they will push those failures uphill for eternity, giant sloppy, Sisyphean sacks of cellulite rather than boulders, up a hill paved with Oreos and dried tears.

In summary, the Biggest Loser would only be acceptable entertainment if the contestants were constantly mocked and tormented with their favorite foods, all while the commentators for Most Extreme Challenge and Wipeout cracked jokes at the contestants' collective expense. Sadly, the show fails to account for the inherent hilarity in fat people running and jumping, and focuses more on their incessant weeping and complaints. Since a Venn Diagram displaying the body types of the people featured on Hoarders and the people on the Biggest Loser would consist of a single circle, it might just be easier to drive around to their houses, shoot all of the occupants, and burn them to the ground. Either way, fat people should shut the fuck up about their fatness and suffer the miserable lives they've chosen to live in silence or fucking do something about their fatness, also silently, and not on television. As they likely will refuse to do so and claim they have one of the many genetic disorders they love to insist are the problem, I'll just have to settle for mocking them in public and having a rage seizure every time Biggest Loser airs in the gym.

20 March 2013

Of late, I've noticed that people seem immensely preoccupied, at least on the internet, with comparing their "achievements" in the gym with those of others. Numerous benchmarks have been bandied about as indicators of a particular level of strength, all of which I've found to range between laughably low and downright embarrassing. It would seem that this is because everyone appears to be very preoccupied with comparing themselves to an average, which is never a good way to determine excellence, and it's either a salve to the ego of someone who sucks at lifting or completely inconsequential to someone who doesn't. In either case, they're pointless. For those of you who are blissfully unaware of the existence of these charts, here they are (ladies, the misogynist who made this chart apparently felt that you are undeserving of a chart... of which you should probably be glad):

I find this one particularly funny, because according to it, I was a pro level lifter before I'd even had a sip of protein powder as a 134 lb wrestler. I was that strong not because I'm a freak, but because I trained 6 days a week with people a hell of a lot bigger and stronger than myself... and I actually put some effort into lifting.

These seem to make sense if you're the type of person who needs a benchmark against which to gauge your success, but if you get validation out of a chart you're probably one rainy day away from throwing yourself off a fucking bridge anyway. Thus, anyone who falls into that category should start working on their jump squats so they can do it right.

This chart would be more aptly called "If This Means You're Strong, The Apocalypse Is Nigh".

Now we're starting to enter the land of funny. If you bench less than 225 at any bodyweight as a male over the age of 15 who has two working arms, your name should not exist anywhere in conjunction with the word "strong", let alone "very strong". This category should be called "Bitch Mode".

This shouldn't even be a chart, and if you're on it, you're not a person.

Weirdly, for the pre-internet generations, the only benchmarks in the gym were beating gym records, beating your friends' best lifts, and adding another 45lb plate to any lift. Those were cool milestones in retrospect, but hardly our overarching goal- we just liked lifting and knew strength would result naturally out of training. Our milestones arose out of having fun in the gym, and trying to be better than everyone else, rather than simply trying to reassure ourselves that we didn't suck. If you're looking to the internet for validation that you don't suck, here's a newsflash- you suck harder than any other person whose lifetime predated the internet.

There might have been a healthy serving of this from time to time. We didn't give a shit- we were trying to fucking move weight. The only way you avoid failing hilariously in the gym is if you never fucking try.

For instance, I started out with a sub-135 lb bench as a freshman in high school. During my sophomore year, I took a weightlifting class and began competing on bench and weighted dips with another guy about my weight. We benched 3 to 5 times a week, using ever angle on the bench, rep range, volume, and chest exercise permutation of which we could think. By the end of that year, we were both benching 255 with regularity, and by the time Thanksgiving of my junior year rolled around, he hit 300 on the bench and I hit 285.

The upper body weakness of the members of Reddit's /r/fitness amuses her greatly.

We're not the only people I've seen make those jumps, either. My girlfriend Krista, who grew up chubby as hell and totally unathletic, took up Olympic weightlifting her junior year in high school and continued through last year. During that time, she never benched. When she started benching in August of last year, she maxed out with a bounced touch-and-go 85lbs at a bodyweight of about 140. She's now "strong" by the standards of the dumbass charts above for men because she's been training her ass off at the lift for 6 months and is now hitting paused singles at 155 at a bodyweight of 130. That's right, she got leaner and much stronger in 6 months by busting her ass in the gym and dieting hard.

In college, my 150 lb rock climber roommate went from a 225 lb shitfest of a deadlift to 405 for ten in one year, and he never even took a protein supplement. He just deadlifted and did pullups four or five days a week for a year. He and I even got a kid we hated to squat 225 for a double after 6 months of training when he'd never squatted before in his life, and literally folded up like an accordion under 135 the first time he squatted. Another guy in the gym at the time did an unassisted liftoff and touch and go bench of 495 at a bodyweight of around 250 and wouldn't even let anyone stand nearby to spot... just because it was badass. This is how people get fucking strong.

I guarantee Mike Matarazzo never guaged his arm size against that of the average man for inspiration.

Your goal in life should never be to do "as well", be "as good", or work "as hard" as any other person. Instead, you should be striving to overachieve at all times- this is how humanity has lurched forward even while monomaniacal assholes, religious zealots, and harbingers of economic doom wrought havoc on society at large. Measurement by a standard set by the average person leads only to mediocrity, socialism, venereal disease, and eventual burial in an unmarked grave. Transcendence of the human condition, however, leads to every extreme of which you could think- fame, infamy, riches, poverty, brilliance, insanity, super strength, and crippledness, but no matter what the goal, those people will be remembered for their efforts. It's hardly a matter of what other people are doing that drives you forward, as other people are inconsequential nothings, motes of dust, and a possible minor irritation in the quest to achieve greatness, whether that greatness come in the form of intellectual or physical pursuits.

"Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats."

- H. L. Mencken

Since time immemorial, man has striven to transcend the human condition. Ancient people revered those who did so as gods, and they then became immortalized in the writings of the time. Thus, the ancient warriors who served as the Michael Jordans of the battlefield are still remembered today, as Achilles and Ajax, Gilgamesh and Herecles. Even at that time, humans looked for ways to vastly outdistance the performance of their peers, as we are a naturally competitive species, and codified systems of weight training emerged with specialized diets and concomitant performance enhancing drugs. Herecles purportedly trained with weights under the tutelage of his patron Chiron (History of Weight Training), and Greek Olympians took everything from opium to bull testicles to improve their performance, all while eating a meat-heavy diet unlike anything eaten by the average Greek (History of PEDs in Sports) and using systems of weight training nearly as old as the written word. This was not done in an effort to "cheat" as there was no draconian prohibition on the substances one could consume in order to exceed the performance of the average person, but rather simply to be better than the simpering, weak, ignorant troglodytes these great men found themselves surrounded by. In short, they wanted to transcend the human condition through their own actions and self-improvement.

Fast forward to the modern era- Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra ushers in a new era of transhumanism, a field of study that grew directly from Nietzsche's concept of the "Übermensch". Amusingly, Nietzsche's work inspired the hero Superman, the goody-two-shoes alien superhero who taught generations of little boys to mind their p's a nd q's and do what they're told. This was about as like the intent of Nietzsche's work as it was the creators of Silly Putty to have created a toy out of plastic explosives, and yet, just as the toy, Superman became a G-rated joke of what he was originally intended. Nietzsche's original intent was that the übermensch (overman / superhuman) should transcend all of the trappings of humanity and exceed the intellectual, physical, and moral performances of their human underlings... most of which were embodied in Superman. Superman, however, became a joke version of Nietzsche's theories because his superhuman strength and intellect were still bound to humanity by his laughable adherence to Judeo-Christian morality, which is neither logical nor laudable in the eyes of an übermensch.

“Something unappeased, unappeasable, is within me.”

― Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Driving the übermensch, and man in general, is the "will to power", a concept Nietzsche championed throughout his works and also serves as the basis for my interpretation of transhumanism. For those who are unaware of the concept, transhumanism is generally the purview of people who want to become the Borg from Star Trek. Instead of simply improving upon nature's design through force of will, these people seek to remove and replace parts they feel are weak, ugly, or ill-designed with technological constructs that serve the same, or better, purpose. This concept, however, is at odds with what I believe to have been Nietzsche's intent, in addition to just being weirdly distasteful, if for no other reason than the fact that electing to allow someone to hack bits off your body and replace them with man-made parts is fucking strange. Thus, instead of improving themselves by force of will, they are willing to pay for improvements to themselves that aren't really "theirs"- they're foreign objects where their parts used to be.

Not ideal.

The driving force behind the two sides of transhumanism, and many training protocols bandied about on the internet, is an age old question- "is it nature or nurture that makes us who we are?" Philosophers have argued for centuries about this issue, and in spite of lengthy discourses written by men like Hobbes, Rousseau, Locke, and Grotius, philosophers still cannot come to a consensus on the subject. luckily, however, I exist to finally put an end to the debate. It is nurture, not nature, that makes man who he is. At his essence, man is a brutish, violent, greedy, physical creature with the requisite mental acuity to wreak havoc on the world wholesale. It is nurture that has forced man to become a simpering, cowering, weak-willed and -bodied version of his prototype, and it is nurture that can bring forth the best that prototype has to offer. This process is neither pleasant, nor is it quick, but enduring it will allow you to regain the physical and intellectual superiority of our ancestors.

Perhaps not entirely accurate, but a far closer to the appearance of a Cro-Magnon man than your average salaryman is.

For those of you, and I'm sure you are legion, who will contend that genetics play a large role in your current level of suckitude, allow me to pre-emptively retort- there has been no long-standing eugenics program of which I am aware that has created a race of subhumans. The body somatotypes that are bandied about in bodybuilding magazine are well-recognized as psuedoscience by everyone but Joe Wieder and Reddit. Your physical stature is a direct result of the food your parents fed you growing up and your level of physical activity. That's called nurture, motherfuckers, not nature. If you suck, it's because your parents trained you to do so and you decided to continue on the path they chose for you. those people you think of when you think "genetic freak" are actually just people raised in an environment that made them what they are. To wit:

Nikola Tesla, one of the most prolific inventors and intelligent people of all time, was constantly forced to do memory exercises and study as a child. Because of this rigorous training, Tesla was able to do calculus in his head as a youth, and he retained most of what he learned through his father's rigourous mental exercises. As for his inventive side, his mother was an inventor who created a number of devices to aid her in housework, which Tesla credited with inspiring his inventive side (PBS).

Alexander Karelin, who was nicknamed "The Experiment", grew up in Siberia, the son of a truck driver and an office worker. As he lived in Siberia, Karelin's life was far from cushy, and he grew incredibly strong from skiing everywhere and dragging trees he felled by hand through the tundra to their house for firewood. This lifestyle inured him to hard and heavy training, which he initially conducted by rowing boats through ice-filled rivers and running for hours through waist deep snow. He continued his brutal training throughout his career, eventually amassing a record in Greco-Roman wrestling of twelve European Championships, nine World Championships, and three Olympic gold medals, winning every match he entered for thirteen years, and going ten years without giving up a single point (Karelin).

Jerry Rice, widely considered to be the greatest wide receiver in NFL history, credits his brutal training regime with his success. Rice had very average speed, but was able to set records that surpassed those of the second place receivers in total reception yards, total touchdowns, and total receptions by over 50%. Rice busted his ass in training to get the skills necessary to achieve these accomplishments, training twice a day, 6 days a week in the offseason. Rice's workouts were so brutal that his trainer won't release them to the general public for fear someone would gravely injure themselves trying to replicate Rice's feats (Colvin).

There are plenty of other examples, but you get the point- greatness is earned by a will to power; a will to surpass one's humanity; a will to become the übermensch. No fancy program is necessary, no incremental progression will lead to greatness, and no amount of conversation about it will do a motherfucking thing.

14 March 2013

For those of you who hate it when I post these, get fucked. I get perhaps ten texts, IMs, and emails a week asking for book, music, and movie recommendations, and making a blanket post is far easier than replying with the same information over and over. To those of you who have asked for recommendations, enjoy- all of the books are linked to make it easier to find them.Books

Mark Lawrence's Prince of Thorns (The Broken Empire) series.
In looking for quotes from the book online, I was amused to read the blatherings of various feminist halfwits (and their dickless, simpering bitch boys) who reveled in giving reviews of this series, which they, to a person, had not read. Instead, they based their reviews off other reviews, each confused Tori Amos t-shirt wearing idiot after another trying to out-inflame the previous waterhead's idiot remarks with tales of woe and injustice from the pages of Mark Lawrence's books. Many of you have already clicked the hyperlink to buy the books, I'm sure, because with each purchase, an washed feminazi broad buys a bra the same day she loses her job at Starbucks. I'm not going to link their idiocy, because i don't want to send them any traffic, and because self-professed "feminists" are perhaps the least well-educated, over-opinionated, illogical creatures on the planet. For those females who read my blog, you've likely come to the realization that I don't hate women- I hate women who are "typical" feminine women- namely, stupid, materialistic, pop-culture obsessed, vain, lazy, greedy, soul-sucking broads who populate any college campus and think "like" is a word as important and ubiquitous as "fuck". We'll have to add to that list penis-envying, man-hating, delusionally-seeing-oppression-at-every-corner, feminist cunts.

In any event, these books are phenomenal. The protagonist is the ultimate anti-hero, and is a 13 year old killing machine bereft of empathy or compassion in the first book. He literally guts a man and mocks him as he dies about having raped the guy's daughters in the first 10 pages. From there, the books just gets better, as you discover the protagonist is not only an unstoppable killing machine surrounded by an entertaining cast of brigands, but that he's also well educated, highly intelligent, and clever as shit. I won't divulge much of the plot because I don't want to spoil it, but know these books serve as an adequate pre-workout supplement if you left your stimulant of choice at home.

Larry Correia's Monster Hunter International
and Grimnoir Chronicles
series.
Larry Correia is one of the most innovative authors currently working in the sci-fi/fantasy game, and these series are proof. The former series chronicles the life of Owen Zastavia Pitt, a hulking behemoth of an accountant-turned monster hunter who also happens to be a former underground pit fighter and son of a psychotic survivalist. Correia opens the first book with Pitt's brutal beating of his boss with his bare hands... after his boss turns into a werewolf. He then gets invited to join Monster Hunter International, where he fights a litany of interesting creatures plucked from mythologies around the world. Not only are these books fun as shit and violent as hell, but they're educational- you learn a hell of a lot about mythological creatures.

The latter series features a protagonist not unlike Owen Pitt, in a world wherein people began displaying magical powers in the mid-19th Century. Not everyone has powers, however, and not all magical persons have the same powers. As such, there's basically a constant chess match going on between combatants as they battle each others' magic. All-American badass Jake Sullivan can control gravity with magic, and does so to dispatch any and all comers with ease. Basically, he's the Hulk during the mob-enforcer story arc but with the added ability of controlling gravity. Mash together a bit of steampunk, magic, and hard boiled noir and you get this series. For those of you who like me are leery of books involving magic- this is no Harry Potter- you'll actually remain awake while reading this and no one wields a twig as a magical talisman/weapon.

Gordon Lavelle's Bodybuilding: Tracing the Evolution of the Ultimate Physique
This is pretty much a must have for any student of bodybuilding, the history of physical culture in the United States, or anyone curious about the roots of widespread bodybuilding in the United States. This book really illuminated the drastic difference between the Golden Age of bodybuilding and now, detailed the battles between Bob Hoffman, Doug Lurie, and Joe Wieder, and covered some of the more modern competitions in pretty intense detail. Prior to reading this book, I thought I knew a great deal about the history of modern bodybuilding, but after reading Lavelle's work decided that I'd really known quite little.

Interestingly, this well-written tome is the work of a bodybuilder and sometime author for the website Muscle and Strength. According to his bio on Muscle and Strength, Lavelle's "competition record includes two runner-up finishes at the NPC California State Championships; he was also overall winner of the Contra Costa Championships, first place at the Orange County Championships, and winner of the AAU Mr. Western USA teenage division". Thus, you're getting the historical perspective of an athlete, not a casual bystander, which is probably what makes the book so enthralling.

John Ringo's Troy Rising series
I've long been a fan of Ringo and have already recommended his Posleen series, I think. Though Ringo's a bit hit and miss with his books, this hard sci fi trilogy is spot on the entire way through. The series chronicles the arrival of two alien species to Earth, using a sort of stargate to transport from system to system. One of the species uses kinetic energy weapons to destroy major cities on Earth, and then establishes themselves as the "protectors and liberators" of the Earth system. The only man bright enough to figure out a way to toss them out is an out-of-work comic book artist who becomes the richest man on Earth trading a very cheap Earth commodity to the non-warlike aliens for exorbitant amounts. With his wealth, he builds an orbital defense system that becomes the launching pad for an Earth fleet to take out the warlike aliens. Yeah, these books are as badass as they sound.

Ernest Clines's Ready Player One
If you've not heard of this book, you're not paying attention. Ready Player One has only been out for a year or so and is already considered a cult classic. It's set in a dystopic 2044, wherein most of the world spends their lives in virtual reality, working, playing, and learning without moving a muscle. The progenitor of this virtual world dies and leaves behind a massive fortune. The protagonist, an impoverished prole who would not be out of sorts if dropped into a Dickens novel sets out to win that fortune by following the clues left by the virtual world's creator, battling other online players, corporate ninjas, and the occasional trailer park bomb to do so. RPO is full of 1980s pop culture and video game references, so it's great for old fucks like myself. Interestingly, the book's been so popular that it's extended into reality, and if you follow clues left online, you can apparently win an actual DeLorean, the hideously slow stainless steel deathtrap Michael J. Fox drove in Back To The Future.

David Wong's John Dies at the End and This Book is Filled With Spiders
Trippy, gory, and generally fucking awesome. I'd try to describe the books, but they're insane enough that doing so would be more or less a lost cause. Nevertheless, I'll try. Two guys in an unnamed town take a sentient drug that kills nearly everyone else that takes it, whereafter they can see and must do battle with extra-dimensional aliens bent on domination of our world and who utilize a variety of horrifying means to do so, such as monsters made of frozen cuts of meat, flesh eating worms, spiders covered with legs like a Coosh ball, zombies, poop demons, and any other Cronenberg-esque horror of which you could think. Equally awesome and bizarre, you must read these.

Katy Stauber's Revolution World
This is, to my knowledge, the only female-penned book not by Ursula K. LeGuin I've ever liked. Generally I find that female authors spend far too much time on character motivations and emotions and not enough on the action. not so with Katy Stauber, though she does have some amusing moments of insights into the wild and woolly depths of the female mind. How women stand their own thoughts, I'll never know. In any event, this is also a near future dystopia in which geneticists from Texas team up with online gamers to foment a libertarian revolution in an increasingly fascist United States. If you have an ounce of Libertarian sentiment in you, you will love the shit out of this book.

J. Stanton's The Gnoll Credo
For those of you who don't know who J. Stanton is, he's a nerd who happens to lift decent amounts of weight while retaining the ability to do shit like fasted mountain climbs. He's also a widely recognized paleo dieting authority and a hell of an intellectual. the Gnoll Credo has nothing to do with any of taht, while simultaneously having everything to do with it- it's a social critique of modern society written as a novel. in it, a man travels to the land of the Gnolls to study their behavior (Gnolls are mythical hyena/human hybrids). For those of you (who like Paul Carter of Lift Run Bang) are woefully unaware, hyenas are probably the coolest animals on Earth- they're apex predators with intelligence greater than that of the higher primates. They've gotten a bad rap from Africans for being scavengers, but Africans are notoriously poor protectors of the environment, scholars, scientists, and pretty much everything else at which one would need to be awesome to be an authority on wildlife. Thus, forget what you know about them and read National Geographic. In any event, Stanton's book skewers all of modern society, pointing out (from the perspective of the Gnoll), that modern humans focus entirely on the trivial and ignore the most important shit in life.

This is perhaps the only readable book you'll ever find with a philosophy that might echo your own, and thus you must read this forthwith- it's more life changing than Fight Club, and the perfect companion novel to that badass book.

“We are born and we die.

No one cares, no one remembers,

and it doesn’t matter.

This is why we laugh.”

Music
In case you guys want some new shit to listen to, here's what I've been rocking of late.

Nasty- Love
Nasty's previous efforts have been marred by shitty, muddy production, but this album is the unadulterated balls. Belgium's hardest bring the ruckus on Love. Additionally, this is the best hardcore video ever produced, bar none.

Texas In July- S/T
For once, I recommend pretty much just straight up metal. Though I suppose these guys are technically metalcore, it's well worth a listen, and for me is a nice change from the "chug chug blech" sound to which I predominantly listen. Additionally, the song in the video below has one of the coolest, if tragically short, breakdowns I've heard recently.

Within The Ruins- Elite
What do you get when you cross crushing deathcore with At The Gates and maybe a tiny bit of syphonic death metal? Probably the most ridiculous music of all time. Within the Ruins pretty much defies description. Just listen to it. Not great for the gym, but great for pretty much any other time. The title pretty much sums up this album- shit is too elite for words.

The Browning- Burn This World
Before you assholes flip out, consider this electroniccore band's pedigree- the singer is the original signer for As Blood Runs Black. metal enough for you? Now get over yourselves and enjoy something just because it's fucking fun.

While we're at it, this song is the song that got me into dubstepcore in the first place- Big Chocolate's remix of an Asking Alexandria song,. complete with the coolest dubstep breakdown ever at :56.

If you like that, you should also like Skrillex's remix of Bring Me The Horizon off their remix album.

In the next Random Awesome Shit I'll give you some movie recommendations (I don't have cable, so I burn it up on Netflix nightly) and some new supplements you definitely need to grab. You should have enough to tide you over until then.

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